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Rumor: Justice League Movie Script Scrapped; Needs New Writers

After the failure of Green Lantern, The Dark Knight trilogy (along with star Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan) bidding farewell and Zack Snyder's Man of Steel representing a big question mark - especially after a no-show during the Super Bowl - there are understandably many questions about the still-unconfirmed Justice League adaptation.

Outside of knowing Will Beall was brought in to develop a Justice League script last summer, nothing official has been revealed about Justice League. Rumors had it set to compete against The Avengers 2 come 2015 but now, the film may have regressed back to step one and may need an entirely new script.

Just two days after Mark Millar, creative consultant for Fox on their Marvel movies, called out Justice League as" an excellent way of losing $200 million," describing their characters as "too out of date," Badass Digest has the scoop from multiple sources that the current screenplay for the big-budget Justice League team-up has been scrapped. And we're not talking about Warner Bros. looking for revisions - we're talking about totally giving up on the story they had in mind.

According to their sources, all indications are that the script simply wasn't good, and it was made worse by studio exec meddling (recall: Warner Bros. power struggle) that's resulted in characters being pulled, re-added, and pulled again throughout the process. They also reaffirmed the notion that Warner Bros. is simply waiting on the reception of Man of Steel before making any big decisions as Henry Cavill's performance as Clark Kent AKA Kal-El AKA Superman may be the driving force behind launching a unified DC cinematic universe much like Marvel's.

After the poor reception of Gangster Squad for which Beall wrote for Warner Bros., the news shouldn't come as a major surprise. Furthermore, if the rumors reported by Latino-Review about Justice League involving Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Superman and Wonder Woman battling Darkseid in their first outing together were true, there was concern they were jumping into something too big and not fit for the beginning of such a franchise. WB was already taking a risk at throwing heroes together who didn't have their origin tales told first, but by also tossing in one of their greatest cosmic villains, one that's comparable to Marvel's Thanos in many ways, there's simply not enough time to develop the characters.

As it stands, Justice League does not have a director and is likely looking for new writers, and it sounds like they need a script before they'll get the former. A few things are clear: Warner Bros. is uncertain about the future of their DC Entertainment properties and they do not have a plan in place. Maybe it's time to bring in some legitimate comic book aficionados from DC into the mix.

For years, the Screen Rant staff has been championing Bruce Timm, a man who's been involved on the DC Animation side of things for two decades, as a go-to figurehead for their live-action universe. Let's get him and other folks from the comic book side in place to piece together a long-term gameplan for the story and structure of the DC cinematic universe, since it's looking less and less likely that Justice League will meet any 2015 release date. See: Screen Rant's five tips for building a DC movie universe, courtesy of Kofi Outlaw.